


Everything I Build (Is Breaking Down)

by smilebackwards



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-07
Updated: 2011-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur only ever works with Dominic Cobb.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything I Build (Is Breaking Down)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://dream-exchange.livejournal.com/profile)[**dream_exchange**](http://dream-exchange.livejournal.com/). Can also be read [here](http://community.livejournal.com/dream_exchange/14913.html). Thanks to [](http://helenvalentine.livejournal.com/profile)[**helenvalentine**](http://helenvalentine.livejournal.com/) for the beta!

"Mal," Eames says, forgoing the usual hello/how are yous, "I'm in love."

Mal's laugh comes through over the phone line. "Again, Eames?"

"Well, yes," Eames admits. "But this is the last time, I'm sure of it. His name is Arthur and he can break down and reassemble a Remington in twenty seconds flat and when he smiles, my God, the dimples could slay a man at thirty paces. He--"

"Eames," Mal says, and there's something in her voice that stops him in his tracks even though he's sure he could wax on about Arthur for hours, for days, forever. "Eames, where did you meet Arthur?"

"I suppose it's a little cliché," Eames confesses, "but I met him in a dream." Mal makes a sound he can't interpret, so Eames forges on. "Your husband, Ellison and I were on the second level of a rather cunning Winchester Mystery House-inspired mansion - I didn't realize Cobb was so enamored of Penrose stairs - and the projections had just turned on us, when a blaze of gunfire came out of one of the upstairs bedrooms. He was beautiful, Mal, my Arthur," Eames sighs, remembering Arthur's steady artist's hands on the trigger of his gun, the sharp cut of his suit and the sweep of his jaw.

"Anyhow," Eames says, "He was shot out of the dream before the rest of us and he was gone by the time we got the information and resurfaced, but Cobb explained that he'd contracted him as backup. I fully intend to trade my cut from this job for Arthur's phone number, so you can probably expect some lovely jewelry from your husband in the near future."

Eames expects a silvery laugh, a jubilant congratulations, but the line is silent and he thinks for a moment that maybe the call's dropped. "Love?" he questions.

"I'm here," Mal says, wavering. "Eames, is Dom with you?"

"He's just the room over, pet," Eames says, worried. "Do you want me to run and fetch him for you? Is something wrong?"

"Yes," Mal says.

-

Cobb refuses to give him Arthur's number.

Which isn't to say that Eames doesn't surreptitiously steal Cobb's phone and find Arthur's number anyway, but his past twenty calls have all gone to voicemail and if Arthur is listening to his increasingly salacious messages, they haven't enticed him to call back.

Eames doesn't usually stay on with any one extractor for more than a job or two, but when Cobb calls and asks him to run a job in Helsinki, Eames jumps at the chance. Everyone in his wide range of contacts has told him, with varying degrees of resentment, exactly two things about the elusive Arthur:

1.) Arthur is the best point man in the world.

and

2.) Arthur only ever works with Dominic Cobb.

-

The point man for the Helsinki job is not Arthur.

Eames would be more displeased with Cobb if Cobb didn't seem to resent the fact as much as Eames does. Cobb spends a great deal of time shouting things like, "You call this _research?_ " and "For the love of God, how are you unable to comprehend a simple paradox?" He compares everything Martin does, from tailing the mark to coffee runs, to how Arthur would have done things and always finds Martin lacking.

Martin finally snaps after Cobb throws a heap of his files on the floor calling them "unreliable fallacies."

"I'm sorry I'm not your _precious_ Arthur!" Martin yells. "Why isn't he here, anyway? Did he get sick of your constant berating and fuck off?"

Cobb punches Martin across the face hard enough to knock the man out cold. Then he gives him a swift kick to the ribs while he's down. Eames winces in Martin's stead.

They get a new point man.

He is still not Arthur.

However, Simmons is eminently more competent than Martin and gets enough solid groundwork laid for Cobb to grudgingly, and none too gently, stick them all with IV needles and switch on the PASIV.

Ten minutes after they drop into the dream, Arthur appears.

"Darling!" Eames smiles, sliding over to him immediately. "You have no idea how much terrible strife you could have saved us by just arriving in Helsinki a few days earlier."

Arthur ignores him, striding over to Cobb and putting a hand on his shoulder. Eames has always been able to read people exceedingly well, but the expression on Cobb's face when he pulls Arthur into a hug eludes him. "I'm glad you're here, Arthur," Cobb says when he finally releases him.

Arthur smiles. "Where else would I be?" he says.

Eames is so struck with adoration for Arthur's left dimple, for the jut of his cheekbones and the curves of his lips, that he doesn't notice Cobb fail to smile back.

-

While Cobb is off rooting around in the mark's safe, Eames and Arthur are engaged in a firefight that has already kicked Simmons out of the dream.

"So, where are you from, darling?" Eames asks, firing lazily and keeping most of his focus on Arthur.

"Chicago," Arthur says shortly, all his focus on the approaching projections. He fires four shots in quick succession and two murderous businessmen holding M9s drop with double-taps to their chests.

Eames approves of Arthur's marksmanship the way he approves of pretty much everything else about Arthur. "What's your favorite color?" Eames asks randomly.

Arthur still keeps his gaze on the projections, but his lips turn up in a sardonic smile when he says, "Gray."

"Did you have any pets as a child?" Eames throws out.

Arthur pauses and turns to look at him for the first time, his brow furrowed. "I don't k--" he starts, but something explodes outside, pulling his attention, and when he turns back to Eames, his response changes to, "Is there a reason for all these questions, Mr. Eames?"

"Just getting to know you," Eames says with a winning smile.

Arthur doesn't look won, but he offers Eames a hand up when the projections start to charge them.

They sprint down the street, firing bullets over their shoulders, and when Arthur stumbles Eames feels something jolt painfully in his chest.

Arthur's gun clicks empty and he shouts, "Eames! Eames, stop shooting!" Eames stops and they take cover behind the corner of a building. "We're going to need your last bullets for ourselves," Arthur explains fatalistically. He half-collapses against Eames and Eames feels the warm stickiness of blood where Arthur is pressed against him. He lowers Arthur gently to the ground.

"Arthur," Eames says quietly, "I only have one bullet left."

Arthur nods weakly, hands pressed tight to the wound on his side. "Don't waste it on me," he says, "I'm already dead." But Eames can hear the boots of Adler's projections slapping against the pavement and he knows Arthur will still be alive when they reach him.

"I'd never let you suffer, darling," Eames says, kissing Arthur's fluttering eyelids. He puts the last bullet through Arthur's temple.

The projections tear Eames apart.

-

When Eames gasps up out of the dream, he sees Cobb and Simmons engaged in a heated conversation. "Dangerous," Simmons is saying and Cobb is shaking his head angrily.

Eames looks around with the faint hope that Arthur hasn't already disappeared. The lawn chair beside him is empty.

His eyes are drawn back to Cobb when the man's shoulders slump dejectedly. Eames strains his ears, but they're half the room away and all he catches is, "secret" and "give you half my cut."

Simmons nods. He gives Eames a strangely pitying look before he goes.

-

Eames takes so many jobs with Cobb, people have started to refer to him as Cobb's forger, the way people call Arthur Cobb's point man.

Except Arthur never runs point anymore. When Eames asks him why not, Arthur just says, "I can't," and empties a clip into a projection. Eames shuts up about it.

Sometimes the jobs go relatively smoothly and Eames has the time to make an attempt at wooing Arthur. He starts slowly, the two of them leisurely walking down avenues of a cityscape and Eames letting his arm brush against Arthur's, deliberate. They drink whisky in an Irish bar and beer on a beach that reminds Eames of Greece.

The fifth time they dream together, their architect builds a carnival maze for the mark. Eames laughs and buys Arthur a pink blob of cotton candy. Then he points up at the Ferris wheel and makes a suggestive motion with his eyebrows. "Really, Mr. Eames?" Arthur says sardonically, but he comes along easily when Eames tugs him by the hand.

Eames drapes an arm behind him over the back of the seat. The ride stops when they reach the very top and Eames turns to look at Arthur's perfect profile only to find Arthur staring him full in the face. He leans forward slowly, inch by inch, giving Arthur time to back away, but Arthur holds his ground and Eames thinks, _finally, finally_ and kisses him for all he's worth.

It's perfect, but something inevitably goes wrong with Cobb's extractions and this one is no different. Arthur always dies in the dreams and he always dies first.

They're walking toward the fun house, Eames swinging their clasped hands between them, grinning, and Arthur is saying, fondly, "You're like a child," when the projections turn on them.

The man running the Tilt-O-Whirl picks up a gun from beneath his seat and starts shooting. While Arthur and Eames are hugging the dirt for safety's sake, another projection snatches up the steel mallet from the strength tester game and swings. Eames shouts in pain, grasping his mangled hand to his chest, and Arthur yells, "Up! Get up! We need cover!" dragging him up by his belt.

Between their swerving run for the stables and actually finding cover behind the wooden slats of the stalls, Arthur catches a bullet in the neck.

Eames pulls him into his lap. "Won't you wait for me to wake up before you go, Arthur?" Eames begs. "I'd like to see you in the real world sometime."

Arthur tries to shake his head, but pain stills him. "I can't," he says, and he sounds so sad, and his blood is so red, that Eames can't bear to push him further.

"Shh, darling," he says, running his unbroken hand through Arthur's hair, "Go to sleep."

Cobb comes running around the corner yelling, "Arthur, Arthur!" His last Arthur shushes to a whisper when he sees Arthur on the ground. Cobb steps closer taking in the limp lie of Arthur's body, the blood on his face. He turns his head left and throws up.

A well-placed grenade wakes them up less than a minute later, but Arthur is already gone.

Cobb rolls a red die every time they come out of a dream. He always covers it with a hand before Eames can see how it lands.

-

Eames confiscates the phone from Cobb that night in the hotel to tell Mal all about his epic first kiss with Arthur. He leaves out the depressing ending, but she still sounds so very sad as she congratulates him and he wonders if Cobb's already told her the depressing bit.

Cobb takes the phone back after a minute. Eames steps into the next room to give them their privacy, but the high-domed ceilings of the suite project the voices.

"You have to tell him, Dom," Mal says, her voice sounding distant and wet. "You have to tell him _now._ It's already too late."

"I'll tell him," Cobb says. "I'll tell him."

-

The next time an extraction takes a turn for the worse, there's a lynch mob behind them and a ledge in front of them. Eames has known for a long time now how important it is to die on your own terms. He takes Arthur's hand.

"Wait," Arthur says, "Wait, let me go first."

Eames shakes his head. "We'll go together, darling," he says. They jump.

"I'm so sorry, Eames," Arthur says as they're falling, his words almost lost to the wind. "I'm so sorry." He clutches Eames' hand to his heart.

 _Sorry for what?_ Eames wants to ask, but then they hit the ground.

Eames wakes up gasping, one hand stretched out like he's still holding on to Arthur. Except he isn't. He isn't, and Arthur isn't waking up beside him, isn't there at all, even though Eames knows they died at just the same moment.

"Where is he?" Eames asks desperately. "Cobb, where's Arthur?"

-

Cobb pours them both two fingers of twenty year old Glenlivet and makes Eames sit down in an overstuffed armchair. "Eames," he says, and the hoarse creak of his voice is startling. Cobb rubs his forehead and takes a drink. He clears his throat. "Eames, " he tries again, and his tone still isn't quite right, heavy, but his words cut out sharp as blades.

"Eames," Cobb says. "Arthur is dead. He's been dead since before you ever met him."

Eames' whole body gives a violent shudder and he can taste bile, bitter and acid, in the back of his throat. "No," he denies. "No. That isn't true."

But everything comes together in a rush. Eames suddenly understands so many things. He understands why Arthur doesn't run point anymore, why he's never, ever been there when Eames comes out of a dream, even the one time they died together. He knows the secret Cobb paid Simmons to keep and why Arthur faltered when Eames asked him questions about his childhood. He hadn't known the answers because Cobb hadn't known them.

"The only Arthur you've ever known," Cobb confirms devastatingly, "is my projection of him."

Eames wants to stand up, to hit Cobb across the face until his eyes and cheekbones bloom blue and red, bruised and bloody like Eames feels. But he can't, because Cobb is saying, "This is what happened," and Eames has to know, he has to know whether he's missed Arthur by inches or by miles, whether Arthur suffered the way Eames promised he'd never let him suffer.

This is what happened:

-

Limbo is an endless stretch of emptiness and ocean, a beautiful wasteland, and everything in Dom aches to build something.

Beside him, Arthur gives a full-body shudder. "Dom," he says, turning in a circle and then clutching at Dom's wrist like he might lose him. "Dom, it's so _empty._ "

"But we can fill it up with anything, Arthur. Let's stay a little longer," Dom says, cajoling, as if Arthur has ever denied him anything.

-

Dom builds feverishly. Skyscrapers and cathedrals, chrome office buildings and stone libraries, rows and rows of identical suburban houses. He builds bridges and towers and parks and makes Arthur tell him that every single one is beautiful.

Arthur builds staircases, climbing forever up into the sky, like he's trying to get somewhere, but the Penrose steps send him in endless loops.

-

Dom has started building from memories before he realizes anything is wrong.

He builds his childhood home, the white paint of the wrap-around porch fading and chipped. He builds the first apartment he and Mal lived in together, the home they have now. _Mal,_ he thinks suddenly, missing her with a fierce ache. _How long has it been?_

When he looks down the endless road, he notices two structures he never made. There is an apartment building of crumbling brick, a rusting fire escape climbing the side up to an open window on the third floor.

Beside it is a tiny clapboard house, shutters half off their hinges, chunks of roofing pulled away. It's sitting submerged in two feet of water, like a hurricane just blew over.

It occurs to Dom that Arthur, who never gave up the secrets of his past, has laid so much of himself bare here.

Dom feels a sudden chill. "Arthur," he calls, but no one answers.

-

Dom finds Arthur building one of his endless paradoxical Penrose staircases. Arthur's eyes are blank as he watches it rise out of nothingness. "Arthur," Dom says warily. "I think we should go back now."

"Go back where?" Arthur asks, turning. For a moment, before he blinks, Dom thinks Arthur's hair looks like its gone gray at the temples.

Dom feels his throat catch, can't speak, can't breathe.

Arthur brushes off his non-response. "All right. Let's go," he shrugs, coming to Dom's side, familiar.

"But you don't even know where we're going," Dom chokes. "You're just okay with that?"

Arthur smiles, all dimples, young. He says, "I'd follow you anywhere."

-

Dom can't bear to ask Arthur to kill himself on his word alone, so he makes a plan.

Dom wades through the flooded first floor of Arthur's old clapboard house. There are faded pictures on the walls, but Arthur isn't in any of them.

He ascends the stairs slowly, almost falling when the wooden railing comes apart under his hand.

On the second floor, the only open door is the bedroom at the end of the hall. Under the bed is a seamless black box with a belt cinched tight around it. It doesn't fit in this crumbling, dilapidated house, but it fits in Arthur who has always been sealed up and buckled down since Dom has known him.

Dom unbuckles the belt and spends hours sliding pieces of the black puzzle box around in complex patterns until it finally clicks open.

Inside, Arthur's red die is resting on its loaded side, one dot up. Dom flips it to six and closes the box.

-

They climb to the top of Dom's tallest skyscraper and Dom says, gently, "This isn't real, Arthur. We need to get home, to Mal and Phillipa and James. They need us. We can't stay here."

Arthur looks around them, at the twisted kaleidoscope world they've created, Penrose steps looping around the outsides of office buildings, his old neighborhood in the middle of a floodplain. "I- I think I know that," Arthur says hesitantly.

"Good," Dom says, relieved. "Good. Let's go home." He takes Arthur's hand and they step forward as one, falling, flying, unafraid to hit the ground.

They blink awake on the living room floor.

Dom is exultant. He kisses Mal passionately, pulls Phillipa and James up into his arms, hugging them so tight they squirm and squeal, " _Daddy,_ put us down!"

Mal raises an elegant brow. "I take it things went well?"

Arthur looks around with blank eyes.

-

It takes them awhile to notice the change in Arthur, the sudden stretches of stillness that come over him, the uncharacteristic clumsiness with which he slices vegetables for Sunday dinner and ends up slicing halfway through his wrist. He apologizes with an amount of contrition that Dom feels isn't really warranted and when Mal presses a clean dishcloth to the wound and soothes him with, "It's all right, Arthur. It's all right. It's just an accident," he doesn't meet her eyes.

Dom starts to watch carefully and it hits him like a blow when he realizes that Arthur - Arthur, who has always been so very good with details - has begun to see the normal, everyday changes of life as evidence that the world isn't real.

Mal starts to wear a new shade of lipstick, a paler red, softer, the way she is softer now, with the children sitting on her lap or at her feet. Arthur brushes his fingers over his lips and looks away.

When there's a freak thunderstorm in June, rain blowing horizontal, like gunfire, against the windowpanes, Arthur just stares.

He never touches his totem anymore.

Dom wonders if Arthur knows something, deep down, about how Dom touched it without permission, if his phantom fingerprints linger, changing the weight so that Arthur no longer trusts it.

-

It's two weeks into July when things finally come to a breaking point. Mal and the children are at the park and the sun is so very bright, blinding, when Arthur says:

"This isn't real, Dom."

He's pacing the back patio, hands in his hair, as frantic as Dom has ever seen him. "We need to get home, to Mal and Phillipa and James. They need us. We can't stay here." Dom feels his blood run cold. It's the echo of what he told Arthur in Limbo and he knows now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he's done this to Arthur, his good intentions gone disastrously off mark.

Arthur pulls his Glock out of his shoulder holster and clicks off the safety.

"Arthur," Dom begs, "Arthur, don't." He wants to lunge for the gun, but Arthur has always been quicker.

Arthur looks at him with such devastating compassion. "It's all right, Dom," Arthur says, "I'll take point." Then he shoots himself in the head.

-

"You son of a bitch," Eames says, covering his eyes, because he suddenly can't stand this world, this world that doesn't have Arthur in it. "You stupid son of a bitch."

"I know," Cobb says, his voice pained. "I know."

Eames grasps at a last bit of hope. Every shade he's ever heard of was conceived out of relentless guilt and turned on their creator, vengeful and terrifying.

He took a job in Singapore once, where the architect unintentionally dragged in a shade. Eames had worked with Fenner on a few jobs and liked him well enough to ask, "What the bloody hell happened to you, mate?" about the large healing cut over his left eye.

"Car accident," Fenner had said, his face bloodless and stiff.

When they'd gone under, Fenner's brother had shown up in the middle of the first level, a scar from his right eye down past the collar of his shirt, his clothes soaked with blood, a seatbelt loose across his shoulders like a sash. He'd shot Fenner twice in each knee and then once in each eye.

"Arthur," Eames says, and then swallows and forces himself to backtrack and say, "Or your projection of Arthur, he _loves_ you. He faced down hundreds of violent projections so you could finish jobs, over and over. That isn't how shades work. They look at you with knives in their eyes and then stab you through the heart."

Cobb swirls the last of his scotch in its tumbler. "Shades are about guilt," Cobb says, draining his glass and putting it down beside Eames'. "I know Arthur's death was my fault," Cobb continues. "I took him down with me to Limbo, I got us stuck there, I incepted him to believe that the world wasn't real without considering the consequences. For all intents and purposes, I put the gun to his head." He sighs and Eames can literally see how much it weighs on him suddenly. Cobb shakes his head, wondering, "But Arthur," he says, "Arthur would never have seen it that way. He would never have blamed me. And so his shade doesn't blame me either."

Cobb smiles bitterly. "I really did know Arthur very well," he says.

-

"I want to go back under," Eames says. "I want to see him again."

Cobb shakes his head slowly. "I don't think that's a good idea, Eames."

"I want to say goodbye," Eames insists. Cobb's face twists with emotion and Eames stares him down until his expression cracks with guilt and he capitulates.

They hook up to the PASIV and drop to the first level, a simple hotel room. There's another PASIV waiting on the bed.

Eames shoves Cobb into the bathroom and dives for it. He's already got the IV in his wrist before Cobb recovers and sprints toward him, shouting, "Eames, don't!" Eames hits the button and drops to the second level. He's sure Cobb is ripping the IV out of his wrist back on the first, but that's the problem with being a level up; even if you do something in a split-second, you're already five minutes too late.

Eames doesn't stick around in the second level, or the third. He knows where Arthur is. Four drops and he's in an endless wasteland, half-full with skyscrapers and ocean.

Arthur is waiting for him, sitting three steps up on a flight of Penrose stairs. "I really am very sorry," he tells Eames.

Eames wonders if Arthur was really always this sad, or if Cobb has imbued this in him, his own feelings leaking subtly into Arthur, but it doesn't truly matter. This is the only Arthur Eames can ever have and he isn't here to say goodbye. "I'm not," Eames says, taking both Arthur's hands and pulling him up off the stairs. "I'm not sorry at all."

Eames builds a Ferris wheel in the middle of one of the free-standing parks. "Really, Mr. Eames?" Arthur says sardonically, but he comes along easily when Eames tugs him by the hand. Eames stops the ride when they get to the very top.

 _We can have a whole lifetime, darling,_ Eames thinks, kissing Arthur desperately, his fingers clutching at the back of Arthur's neck, _we can have a whole life,_ before he wakes up.


End file.
